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BluesTalk

Rock 'n Roll before it was a popular genre

We know that there was a genre overlapping the earliest Chicago Blues (the late 1930s through the 1940s) and the emergence of White Rock 'n Roll (around the early 1950s with Bill Haley and The Comets)...

...that this genre was called "rock", "rockin Blues", "Jump Blues" and was occasionally referred to as "Rock 'n Roll" in Black communities.

It was relegated mainly to "Race" catalogues or "Rhythm and Blues" catalogues until it was appropriated by the White music industry and named "Rock 'n Roll".

It was and is our beloved Rock 'n Roll and the guitarists were amazing Rockers, some leaning toward jazz, some leaning toward Blues...but when ya listen to these examples, the music is our earliest Rock. Just so amazing:

I love all that Jump stuff! Being a tenor player myself I love flipping my wig with some honking and screaming. If you want a laugh, check out Wynnonie Harris' 'Keep on Churnin" pure filth done so well!

Thanks, Gareth

BtW, my book order just came in, the autobiography of Jim Dickinson. Just read Peter Guralnick's bio of Sam Phillips and this one will be a good follow-up to that. Seems the roots music of Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas came together in West Memphis and Memphis like a 1940's junction; "East-West for the Chitlin Circuit, or continue North to Chicago".